21. Then I took shelter under the creepers, descending from its branches, as the scorching top of a mount, finds a temporary shadow under the umbrage of a dark cloud. 22. As I was hanging down with holding the pendant roots in my hand, the horse slided away from underneath me, as the sins of a man glide under him, that puts his trust in the sacred Ganges streams. (The purificatory power of Ganges water, resides even in the belief of its holiness, and does not consist only in bathing in it). 23. Fatigued with my travel of the live-long day in the dreary waste, I took my refuge under this tree; as a traveller rests under the shelter of a kalpa tree at the setting of the sun. 24. All this business of the world was stopped, as the sun went down to rest in the western hills. (The Hindu ritual prescribing no duty for the night consisting of three watches—_triyama rajaní_). 25. As the shade of night overspread the bosom of the universe, the whole forest below betook itself to its nightly rest and silence. (The vegetable creation was known to sleep at night by the Hindu sages). 26. I reposed myself in the grassy hollow of a branch of that tree, and rested my head on the mossy bed like a bird in its nest. (Primeval men slept in the hollow of trees like birds, for fear of rapacious animals in the caves of the earth below, as also in the caverns of upland hills and mountains). 27. I remained there as insensible as one bitten by a snake, and as a dead body that has lost its past remembrance. (Sleep and death are akin to each other—_hypnos kai thanatos didumo adelpho_). I was as impotent as a sold slave; and as helpless as one fallen in a dark ditch or blind pit. Bought slaves _krita-dásas_ and their loss of liberty, were in vogue from the earliest times in India. (अन्ध कुप-अन्ध-कुया = a blind pit). 28. I passed that one night as a long Kalpa in my senselessness; and I thought I was buffeting in the waves like the seer—Markandeya at the great deluge. (_i.e._ The body was insensible in the state of sleep; but the mind was active as in a dream, which makes an age of a moment). 29. I passed the night under a train of dangers and difficulties, that invaded me as in the state of dreaming; and I had no thought about my bathing or eating or worshipping my Maker (the mind being wholly occupied by the objects of the dream). 30. I passed the night in restlessness and disquiet, shaking like the branch of a tree; and this single night of trouble was as long as it was tedious to me (like the time of a lingering disease). 31. A melancholy overspread my countenance, as darkness had veiled the face of the night, and my waking eyes kept watching for the day, like blue-lotuses expecting with their watchful eyes the rising moon. 32. The demoniac noise of wild beasts being hushed in the forest at the end of the night, there fell a shivering fit on me with the clattering of my teeth through excessive cold.